... Question being, is where could a city find the money to follow this sort of city plan? ...

Taxation. City governments get their money by taxation.

Quote:

... I believe that the answer would be for a city to start and print their own currency, ...

You won't get more money just by printing the currency differently. Zimbabwe has plenty of currency, zillions of dollars worth, on its face. And they have no money. Don't confuse currency with money. Two different things.

A city is not going to get richer just by printing, or coining, its own money, no more than Zimbabwe can. It doesn't matter if the currency, itself, is backed by gold, or by spaghetti. A city will only get richer if the government can tax more, in terms of real value, real money. That means having a richer population in the city, to afford higher taxes.

Governments, of any kind, can print currency, or mint coins, but it's people who "make" money. The way people "make" money is by adding value to their community's economic activity, so they get paid "real" money.

Quote:

... This would effectively give the city the power of the central bank to control its own local economy, and the power to give itself no interest loans to complete construction projects, which the city would own in perpetuity giving it a dual incentive to build durable buildings with artistic merit, ...

In other words, you would make everybody a government worker. All those government workers will quickly discover that they can spend their time drinking and telling lewd jokes, instead of working, and what are you going to do about it? If everybody has to be a government worker, you can't fire them, and if you try to intimidate them they'll laugh and make rude noises. Then what?

You want a prosperous local community, then encourage local private industry, which adds real value, and makes "real" money. That's how it's done.

And by the way, a government is not adding value to a society just by having trade policies that make socks cost 50 cents less at the local Walmart, although various people seem to have gotten that odd idea. (I don't mean you.)

Knock it off. This is not the place for you to be kissing nonwhite butt, by advocating nonwhite employment at the expense of whites.You explicitly advocated the employment of nonwhites, race traitor.

I didn't call you a jew, you nonwhite butt kissing liar.

From your advocacy of nonwhites, it sounds like you're trying to wangle a position in the Obama administration. Good luck with that.

Apologize. I can tolerate some name calling, but this goes too far.

On second thought, an individual who would refer to someone as a n#gger lover et al ad nauseum, while presuming to take the moral and intellectual high ground may not be worth more response time or intellectual exercise.

[quote=Nivelles;6215405]Taxation. City governments get their money by taxation.

You won't get more money just by printing the currency differently. Zimbabwe has plenty of currency, zillions of dollars worth, on its face. And they have no money. Don't confuse currency with money. Two different things.

A city is not going to get richer just by printing, or coining, its own money, no more than Zimbabwe can. It doesn't matter if the currency, itself, is backed by gold, or by spaghetti. A city will only get richer if the government can tax more, in terms of real value, real money. That means having a richer population in the city, to afford higher taxes.

Governments, of any kind, can print currency, or mint coins, but it's people who "make" money. The way people "make" money is by adding value to their community's economic activity, so they get paid "real" money.

quote]

best money is backed by govenment IOU's aka bonds, from a government that pays its bills.

While, I largely agree with you on many of your points, I would like to point out that my post was a response to the idea of energy independence. While I did not mention this in either of my posts, I have loosely based my ideas on this subject by studying the city plans of London, Paris and New York, all of which have a "high wealth density" or at least their per capita GDP is very high compared to the world average.

You may well see a plot to "make people use public transit" as a plot designed to make people less wealthy, but the way I see it, cars are an unnessary expensive for the individual and the main reason that we are not energy independent now. If we only used fuel at the same rate as our European Brethren, then we would be energy independent right now. Further the individual would avoid the expense of having to own a car, which for many individuals means taking out a loan, buying full coverage insurance, as well as fuel, and paying various taxes such as license fees, parking tickets, speeding tickets etc.

Currently, I live in a suburban neighborhood, if I wanted to run out and pick up a pack of smokes I would have to either walk about 1.5 miles round trip to the corner store and back, or drive my car for the same trip. For most people, a car has become a must have item for this precise reason in that people are not generally going to choose to walk 1.5 miles to the corner store and back for their day to day errands, must less their daily commute to and from work. To truly become energy independent the time proven solution is to build population dense cities.

Population dense cities also have the advantage of being able to make cost effective Co-generation infrastructure, where the waste heat created by generating electricity can be recycled and used as industrial steam and heating for buildings. I understand that a large expense in the United States (and Australia) which get considerably hotter than Europe in Summer is air conditioning. It is possible to make air conditioning less expensive by circulating chilled water, chilled at a central cooling plant, but to get this cold water to people's homes and businesses requires insulated pipe, which is not cheap to produce or install, and could never be made cost effective in a sparsely populated suburban area, but could be used effectively in denser urban areas. Both district heating and cooling allow consumers to take advantage of economies of scale, and reduce (or eliminate) the need for over head transmission lines which tend to break in storms causing power outages. Although, the intial expense would be higher than what we have now, the operational expenses would be reduced over time leading to a greater efficiency as a result of the investment in infrastructure.

Another one of my concerns, is a loss of efficiency as a result of the need for more home maintanence and losses in the event of a disaster. I live in "Tornado Alley" and have seen first hand the destruction created by these things, but what I have noticed in most cases load bearing masonry structures tend to survive even strong tornadoes as a result of their mass. Even in the event that the structure is destroyed, bricks survive and provide the material building blocks for a soceity to rebuild itself. More common, than a tornado type event is the annual hail storms which have made our homeowner's insurance the highest in the Nation. While I understand that these are regional concerns, the obvious solution that I see is to build more durable buildings that can better withstand everything that nature has to throw at it. Unfortunately, strong buildings are more expensive than flimsy buildings (suburban, wood frame dwellings are flimsy structures, even when clad in brick!), so the most fundamental question to me is how to make the construction of a proper (European style) city most financially feasible in the short run, because in the long run the gains in efficiency would increase the productivity and reduce expenses.

It is unreasonable to expect private businesses and individuals operating in a free market to choose to build to the code that I would require, because the added expenses would greatly increase their cost of doing business or greatly reduce their household's disposible income, which would hurt the local economy in aggregate. Bankers would refuse to finance it, because it would not meet their desirable levels of risk tolerance, and they do not know how to measure risk in some instances such as mixed use buildings, which provide both retail and residential space because they have one risk assessment model for retail space and another for residential. Even if the bankers would approve such structures, they would certainly find additional expenses like art and architectural detail frivolous and demand that such things be cut from the project, although these things are absolutely necessary to make the urban space livable.

I am not philosophically opposed to taxes, but in principle but, I admit that I do not like them. In this instance, to build a better city, it does not make sense nor does it seem ethical to raise taxes on the entire city to improve a single quarter of the city. This is where the "lease" auction would come in, because it would allow business people to bid for control over the space, while not assuming the entire responsiblity and overhead for creating and maintaining that space. Assuming that the building is going to have a useful life for hundreds of years, gives the city a long term asset which should create a return on capital over time, but by financing it through an interest free mechanism it need not worry with meeting interest expenses, if and only if, it is able to create a finance structure where it is unburdened with interest expenses, and other overhead expenses such as maintainence can be kept to a minimum.

The long term lease would be priced in the local currency, and payable in full on the day of the auction, although bidders would be able to arrange credit terms through the "local central bank" with interest. This along with making the local currency the money de jure, and providing a centralized exchange for easy convertiblity with US dollars will insure that there is a demand for the local currency which exceeds its supply, hedging its value and providing some security against hyperinflation. It might also be possible to create a stock exchange priced in the local currency but listing international corporations as well as local businesses, unleashing the power of the stock exchange for small business and increasing investment in the community, while providing investors access to the security of larger companies and bond issues. Since the local currency would be pegged to the gold exchange rate, speculators and goldbugs would be able to gain exposure to the gold market by holding the local currency.

Further since the local currency would be based on the "legal" dollar of the US which is worth a great deal more money than the federal reserve dollar. (Example $50 gold eagle=$800 Federal Reserve Notes; $1 gold Eagle=$16 FRNs) Highly paid profressionals such as doctors and lawyers would be able to divide the reportable income by 16, so a doctor making $300K a year, would be able to report $18,750 eliminating his income tax obligations. Lower paid workers would fall beneath the reporting threashhold and would be able to keep all of the federal withholdings such as social security, giving the entire community more disposable money, which would certainly increase sales tax revenue, and give the entire community an incentive to use the local currency rather than the US dollar.

I'm not against public transit. I hate high density living though. Not only because I hate crowding but also such high density cities make an easy target militarily.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hahajohnnyb

Nivelles,

While, I largely agree with you on many of your points, I would like to point out that my post was a response to the idea of energy independence. While I did not mention this in either of my posts, I have loosely based my ideas on this subject by studying the city plans of London, Paris and New York, all of which have a "high wealth density" or at least their per capita GDP is very high compared to the world average.

You may well see a plot to "make people use public transit" as a plot designed to make people less wealthy, but the way I see it, cars are an unnessary expensive for the individual and the main reason that we are not energy independent now. If we only used fuel at the same rate as our European Brethren, then we would be energy independent right now. Further the individual would avoid the expense of having to own a car, which for many individuals means taking out a loan, buying full coverage insurance, as well as fuel, and paying various taxes such as license fees, parking tickets, speeding tickets etc.

Currently, I live in a suburban neighborhood, if I wanted to run out and pick up a pack of smokes I would have to either walk about 1.5 miles round trip to the corner store and back, or drive my car for the same trip. For most people, a car has become a must have item for this precise reason in that people are not generally going to choose to walk 1.5 miles to the corner store and back for their day to day errands, must less their daily commute to and from work. To truly become energy independent the time proven solution is to build population dense cities.

Population dense cities also have the advantage of being able to make cost effective Co-generation infrastructure, where the waste heat created by generating electricity can be recycled and used as industrial steam and heating for buildings. I understand that a large expense in the United States (and Australia) which get considerably hotter than Europe in Summer is air conditioning. It is possible to make air conditioning less expensive by circulating chilled water, chilled at a central cooling plant, but to get this cold water to people's homes and businesses requires insulated pipe, which is not cheap to produce or install, and could never be made cost effective in a sparsely populated suburban area, but could be used effectively in denser urban areas. Both district heating and cooling allow consumers to take advantage of economies of scale, and reduce (or eliminate) the need for over head transmission lines which tend to break in storms causing power outages. Although, the intial expense would be higher than what we have now, the operational expenses would be reduced over time leading to a greater efficiency as a result of the investment in infrastructure.

Another one of my concerns, is a loss of efficiency as a result of the need for more home maintanence and losses in the event of a disaster. I live in "Tornado Alley" and have seen first hand the destruction created by these things, but what I have noticed in most cases load bearing masonry structures tend to survive even strong tornadoes as a result of their mass. Even in the event that the structure is destroyed, bricks survive and provide the material building blocks for a soceity to rebuild itself. More common, than a tornado type event is the annual hail storms which have made our homeowner's insurance the highest in the Nation. While I understand that these are regional concerns, the obvious solution that I see is to build more durable buildings that can better withstand everything that nature has to throw at it. Unfortunately, strong buildings are more expensive than flimsy buildings (suburban, wood frame dwellings are flimsy structures, even when clad in brick!), so the most fundamental question to me is how to make the construction of a proper (European style) city most financially feasible in the short run, because in the long run the gains in efficiency would increase the productivity and reduce expenses.

It is unreasonable to expect private businesses and individuals operating in a free market to choose to build to the code that I would require, because the added expenses would greatly increase their cost of doing business or greatly reduce their household's disposible income, which would hurt the local economy in aggregate. Bankers would refuse to finance it, because it would not meet their desirable levels of risk tolerance, and they do not know how to measure risk in some instances such as mixed use buildings, which provide both retail and residential space because they have one risk assessment model for retail space and another for residential. Even if the bankers would approve such structures, they would certainly find additional expenses like art and architectural detail frivolous and demand that such things be cut from the project, although these things are absolutely necessary to make the urban space livable.

I am not philosophically opposed to taxes, but in principle but, I admit that I do not like them. In this instance, to build a better city, it does not make sense nor does it seem ethical to raise taxes on the entire city to improve a single quarter of the city. This is where the "lease" auction would come in, because it would allow business people to bid for control over the space, while not assuming the entire responsiblity and overhead for creating and maintaining that space. Assuming that the building is going to have a useful life for hundreds of years, gives the city a long term asset which should create a return on capital over time, but by financing it through an interest free mechanism it need not worry with meeting interest expenses, if and only if, it is able to create a finance structure where it is unburdened with interest expenses, and other overhead expenses such as maintainence can be kept to a minimum.

The long term lease would be priced in the local currency, and payable in full on the day of the auction, although bidders would be able to arrange credit terms through the "local central bank" with interest. This along with making the local currency the money de jure, and providing a centralized exchange for easy convertiblity with US dollars will insure that there is a demand for the local currency which exceeds its supply, hedging its value and providing some security against hyperinflation. It might also be possible to create a stock exchange priced in the local currency but listing international corporations as well as local businesses, unleashing the power of the stock exchange for small business and increasing investment in the community, while providing investors access to the security of larger companies and bond issues. Since the local currency would be pegged to the gold exchange rate, speculators and goldbugs would be able to gain exposure to the gold market by holding the local currency.

Further since the local currency would be based on the "legal" dollar of the US which is worth a great deal more money than the federal reserve dollar. (Example $50 gold eagle=$800 Federal Reserve Notes; $1 gold Eagle=$16 FRNs) Highly paid profressionals such as doctors and lawyers would be able to divide the reportable income by 16, so a doctor making $300K a year, would be able to report $18,750 eliminating his income tax obligations. Lower paid workers would fall beneath the reporting threashhold and would be able to keep all of the federal withholdings such as social security, giving the entire community more disposable money, which would certainly increase sales tax revenue, and give the entire community an incentive to use the local currency rather than the US dollar.

On the issue of public transit, in cities it is VERY indicated. For long distance travel as well.

Somehow, I can see the importance of public transportation being central in a future WN state.

Cars would be expensive to maintain or even purchase, without international trade

What about all the Cadillac Escalades that will be left over? What makes you think there will not be trade? If there would ever be a WN state it would have to be world wide. So we would have colonies all over the world.